All posts tagged Season Premiere

Editor’s Note: Every Sunday after the newest episode of “Mad Men,” lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger will host an online dialogue about the show.

Participants include Columbia University film and television professor Evangeline Morphos; Columbia University history professor Alan Brinkley; Broadway playwright Jean-Claude van Italie, whose trilogy, “American Hurrah,” was featured on “Mad Men;” and recent Harvard University graduate Elly Brinkley. Our panelists will post commentary after the episode ends at 11 p.m or sometime the next day. Readers are invited to join in with their thoughts in the comments section.

11:07 pm (EDT)

Gwen Orel, 'Mad Men' Recapper

The title “Severance” works on several levels. We’re beginning to say goodbye to the season.

We’ll say goodbye to a character from Season One. It looks like we’re saying goodbye to someone at SCDP, but over a discussion of severance pay, we’ll learn otherwise.

We don’t see Jim Cutler, or Don’s family this week.

We open with Don telling a very pretty woman how show off her smooth skin while wearing a fur. Even before the reveal of others in the room, you’ll probably guess that it’s a casting session. Peggy Lee sings “Is That All There Is?”

What year is it?

Both Roger and Ted sport thick moustaches, so it’s at least a few months after the moon landing. L’Eggs are in test markets—but not widely distributed. It’s too warm for coats, but it can’t be spring, because Joan buys a black velvet dress, and what New York department store would sell velvet after February? Finally, there’s a televised broadcast of Nixon announcing troops leaving Vietnam. Such a broadcast was made on Nov. 3, 1969. And Peggy Lee’s version of this song came out in November, 1969, too.

Don’s so integrated with his past now he tells funny stories about it, at a diner with Roger and three girls. Roger snarks to the waitress about her John Dos Passos book, then makes amends with a $100 tip.

Don thinks the waitress looks familiar, so he returns the next day. With little chat, she takes him to the alley for a quickie. Don asks when she is done with work, but she says he got his money’s worth.

At home, Don calls his answering service, retrieving messages from several women. He calls Tricia the flight attendant, in town on a layover. Apparently, Don wants flings.

Rachel Menken, remember, was the department store executive who had an affair with Don in Season One. Don asked Rachel to run away with him when he was terrified of being exposed as Dick Whitman by Pete. She refused.

The next day, Don asks Meredith to set up a meeting with Rachel, to discuss pantyhose. That’s to help out Joan and Peggy, who are having a: hard time with Topaz pantyhose who are now competing with L’Eggs, who sell their hose in supermarkets. Don suggests to Joan renaming Topaz as a department store brand, presumably sold in drug stores. Who has department store accounts? Why McCann Erickson, of whom SCDP is now a subsidiary.

Joan and Peggy have a meeting with McCann Erickson and have to suffer through jokes like, so they’re worried that L’Eggs are going to spread all over the world? So you can pull them down over and over? In the elevator, Joan takes it out on Peggy, when Peggy says Joan “can’t have it both ways,” leading Joan to imply that Peggy’s ugly, again (this trope is getting old). Look for more one step-forward-two-back women’s movement issues this season.

Later on, Joan will refuse to take a call from a McCann goon, and go shopping instead.

Peggy goes on a date with her employee Mathis’ brother-in-law Stevie. It starts bad but then goes so well she suggests going to Paris together. They don’t go when Peggy can’t find her passport, and Peggy decides not to sleep with him because, she says, she “thought he was a fling but now I think you may be more.” He may be a keeper: he seems unthreatened by her bossiness—noting it when she wants to send his wrong order back, but going on to be complimentary.

Meredith tells Don that the conversation with Menken’s was awkward: Rachel Katz stepped down a few months ago, and passed away last week. Don is stunned.

When Don pays a shivah call on her family, Rachel’s sister Barbara is a little cool when she learns who he is. Two small children of Rachel’s sit on a couch. Rachel had leukemia. “She lived the life she wanted to live,” Barbara says.

Kenny and his wife Cynthia give her father, who’s retiring from Dow, golf clubs. Ed boasts that he’s learning to cook, and just yesterday, he made… what was it? “A pop tart, Ed.” My vote for funniest line of the season, right now.

Her dad’s retirement leads Cynthia to coax Kenny to leave his job and write his book. And very next day, Roger fires Kenny because Ferguson from McCann wants him gone. He’ll get a good severance if he teaches Pete his accounts. Hiding in a phone booth, Kenny tells Don this must be a sign, of the “life less lived.”

Or not.

We’ll see Kenny again. He strides into a meeting and announces he has taken the head of advertising job at Dow.

“So you’re going to fire us?” Pete asks.

“Way worse than that,” Kenny says. “I’m going to be your client.”

Don returns to the diner to talk to the waitress—we never do learn her name (her nametag says “Diana”)—about the dream. She questions whether the dream was really special, or whether he often dreamed of her. Of course, this isn’t the first time Don’s had a vision before someone dies. He sits alone at the counter as the episode ends. “Is That All There Is?” returns.

No kidding. Tonight’s big set-piece involves an abandoned supermarket, zombies on the roof, and an Army helicopter. It’s not just a bloodfest, though. There is some very nuanced story telling here, and as we’re re-introduced to the characters, we see how much has changed since the Governor mowed down his own people and left Rick Grimes in control of the countryside around the West Georgia Correctional Facility – and how much hasn’t changed.

Last season, “The Walking Dead” became a phenomenon. It garnered some of the highest ratings on television, it inspired its own talk show and a college course – it even got its own comic-book series. Kidding, kidding, about the comics. Just making sure you’re paying attention. Read More »

How fast does a zombie’s body decay? And what should those bodies look like as they gradually fall to pieces? Such are the issues confronting Greg Nicotero, the special effects designer on “The Walking Dead.”

He and his team are responsible for the two (and only) Emmy awards that the AMC series has won. Nicotero, who served under the zombie godfather George Romero in the 1980s, is an executive producer of ”The Walking Dead” and also a director for the series, which returns Sunday night for its fourth season. He recently visited the Wall Street Journal to discuss the evolving look of the show’s “walkers,” and the question of how long they can physically continue to walk. Read More »

Norman Reedus says we’ll see more of his character Daryl Dixon this season on AMC‘s “The Walking Dead.”

Daryl, a tracker and survivalist in the world after the zombie apocalypse, started out as a put-upon lone wolf, in the shadow of his older brother Merle. But over the show’s three seasons, he’s found his footing and remade himself into a loyal, valued member of the show’s band of survivors. In the new season, which begins tonight, Reedus says he tries to convey that just in the way Daryl talks to people.

“In the beginning, Daryl sort of talked out of the front of his head – he’ll look at you and look at the ground, look at you and look at the ground.” That, Reedus says, was “a bit of shame, from who he thought he was, what he thought other people thought he was. This season, he looks at you dead in the face.” Read More »

When the new season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” begins Sunday night, things are as tranquil as they ever get in a world overrun by zombies. Rick Grimes, the show’s main character – tormented last season by his wife’s death and a bout with near-insanity – seems to have found some peace. He’s stepped back from leading the survivors of the apocalypse, and is focused on farming and his children. He even laughs.

This is still “The Walking Dead,” however – and Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick, says the tranquility won’t last long.

“You know our show – we build something up only to smash it down very quickly,” Lincoln said, chuckling. “Very, very quickly, at the end of the first episode, you will realize that things are not going as well as they shall seem.”

Lincoln will be appearing at New York Comic Con this weekend with other members of the show’s cast, and he talked with Speakeasy about how The Walking Dead will be different in Season 4, where Rick’s head is at, and what it means for the show to keep losing characters and showrunners alike. Read an edited transcript. Read More »

“The Walking Dead” returns Sunday night, and while the horror show was notably snubbed by the Emmy people (just one nomination, for makeup) it’s a ratings monster for network AMC. It isn’t just the network’s top rated show, or one of the top-rated shows on cable. It’s one of the top rated shows on television period, and while the Emmy adulation went to “Breaking Bad,” even that dark show can’t match the ratings for “The Walking Dead.”

What makes “The Walking Dead” different lies in the humanity at the center of this show about monsters. It isn’t really about special effects or the supernatural. It’s about a small-town sheriff, a battered wife, a pizza-delivery boy, a backwoods hayseed, and a God-fearing farmer. At its heart, “The Walking Dead” is a show about a group of ordinary people trying to survive in a world that has suddenly and violently changed on them.

That resonates in a nation where millions of people have had their lives suddenly and violently changed over the past five years. That’s right–this show about zombies hits home because it echoes the terror many of us feel about our jobs, Wall Street and Washington.

“It’s like a mirror of how we evolve through life,” said Melissa McBride, who plays Carol Peletier, said of the show. “How do we deal with these circumstances that aren’t compatible with the way things were? How do we boot back up and survive?” Read More »

Welcome to the second season of “Arrow“! When we last left our hero, Oliver Queen/Arrow, his best friend, Tommy, was dying in his arms as the part of Starling City known as The Glades had been destroyed. Oliver’s mother, Moira, publically admitted that she was part of that plot. Meanwhile, the show continues to tell us about how Oliver became the green hooded archer in flashbacks to his time shipwrecked on the island of Lian Yu.

“Scandal” is back with the truth, the half truth and nothing but the half truth.

Show creator Shonda Rhimes is a genius when it comes to letting out snippets of information. In the season premiere, characters were sharing what they knew in pieces, only divulging what would benefit them in the long run.

Mellie knew all along that Fitz leaked Liv’s name, but she played along with Cyrus and Liv because letting her husband win was not an option. But now a war is brewing in the White House because the “truth” is out that an aide thought Fitz was “hot” (girl’s got taste), and is taking the heat that was meant solely for Olivia. Read More »

It’s another new, new, new day for Alicia Florrick in tonight’s premiere of “The Good Wife.”

Alicia agreed to join Cary Agos to start a new law firm, but without Kalinda. Oh and Peter won the governor’s spot, so she’s also First Lady of Illinois.

The fifth season starts out with an execution in which the condemned swears he didn’t do it. The technicians are having problems administering the drugs and Diane and Alicia are trying to get it delayed. They get it delayed 48 hours. It’s about two girls murdered after a carjacking. The accused, Eddie, had an alibi but he had one of the girl’s necklaces. Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.